Emily Maguire: Your Skirt’s Too Short: Sex, Power, Choice

Session description:

Do the teenage boys you know spend a lot of money on skin and hair care products? When you watch a big sporting event on TV, are the athletes usually women? When you’re at the food court, do your female friends happily gobble down a large burger and fries combo while your male friends pick at a salad and sip diet coke? Do the majority of the fathers you know spend most of their time at home washing, cleaning, cooking and taking care of their kids? Are your male friends afraid to walk on their own at night? Do they avoid drinking too much in case they get raped? When they complain about all this do your female friends shrug and tell them that’s just how the world is?

If the answer to all of these questions was yes, wouldn’t that mean something was wrong? Is that still true if the genders are reversed? Does it matter?

Drawing on her own adolescence and the experiences faced by teens today, Emily Maguire explains how sexism hurts both girls and boys, and helps young people create strategies to reject gender stereotypes and embrace their individuality.

Topics:

Gender stereotypes. Sex: safety, consent, desire. Work/life balance. Female friendship and competitiveness. Body image. Pornography and ‘sexting’. (The focus of each session can be varied according to audience’s interests and needs.)